DJ RISING - LOVE MAIA //

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DJ Rising is Love Maia's first and only book (so far.) It is about a boy named Marley whose mother is a heroin addict and whose father died a few years prior in a hit-and-run. Marley aspires to be a famous DJ who spins at a popular club named Fever in his town. His reality is that he is a sixteen-year-old student at Ellington Preparatory High School on a scholarship. He works hard at keeping his grades up and acting well so he can get a full scholarship at any college away from his town. One day, his friends set him up to work at a club after the normal DJ breaks his arm, This causes many opportunities to open up for Marley and his life is changed forever.

This book is a fast read, and a very interesting book. I was unsure of how I would feel about this book because it is not a book I would normally gravitate towards. On a scale of 1 to 5, I'd give it a 3.5. 

DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE - LAINI TAYLOR //

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Daughter of Smoke and Bone is the first in a trilogy by Laini Taylor. It follows Karou, an art student living in Prague with unusual family and living situations. She was raised by chimaera, beings who are part human and part animal. Karou has no idea how she came to be an orphan to these chimaera. She runs errands for Brimstone, her father figure, where she is sent out to collect teeth for his work, and she is unaware of the use of these teeth for his work. While on one of her missions, she runs into an angel (specifically, a seraph) and is instantly drawn to him, despite their initial violence and fighting.

This book was incredibly difficult for me to take in. The beginning is terribly cliche and cheesy, and it definitely got a good deal of eye-rolls from me. The book proceeds to be painstakingly strung out. However, what makes this book worth it is the last few chapters. The slow-to-read story is worth all of the wait for the ending chapters. It contains incredible plot twists and cliffhangers, and despite their somewhat predictability, they maintain their interest and excitement-inducing abilities. 

Laini Taylor’s writing style is what I contribute to it being so meticulous to read. She uses a very advanced vocabulary very often, and I found myself having to use the dictionary app on my Kindle to decipher the meaning of her intelligent choices of words. I also found that my “background” in art history (meaning my one AP class in art history) was beneficial due to Taylor’s frequent descriptions of the beautiful scenery. She focused heavily on the architecture and scenery every so often and the vocabulary and knowledge I picked up from taking art history as a class definitely helped me better understand and even appreciate what she was writing about.

On a number scale, I struggle to pinpoint this book at one score. It was excruciating to get through, what with its longwinded descriptions and bordering-on-boring more often than not. However, the story was fascinating and invigorating and I am eager to continue the series. I suppose I’d give it a 3.5/5 just for what it put me through in terms of how long it felt like it took me to get through this book and how often I rolled my eyes or sighed over the cliched and cheesy portions of this book. Despite this, I’d recommend it to anyone looking for an exciting story that will grip you in the same fashion as Twilight, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, et cetera. (I can almost feel people telling me it’s sacrilege to group Twilight and Harry Potter in the same list. Oh well.) 

BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY - RUTA SEPETYS //

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Between Shades of Gray was Ruta Sepetys’s debut novel. The story follows Lina Vilkas, a fifteen year old from Lithuania whose family is uprooted in the middle of the night by Soviet forces. Lina, her mother Elena, and her brother Jonas are crowded into a crammed train car with other people taken by the NKVD. They are transported to work in a camp, where they live under cruel and unsanitary conditions. Lina longs to reconnect with her father who was taken away before the rest of her family was, and she aims to contact him by leaving a trail of her drawings for him. Her drawings outline her experiences and time under the Soviet forces.

This book was unbelievably amazing. I knew it had very positive reviews and was praised for its honesty and beauty. It definitely lives up to that positivity. On a number scale, I’d give this book a 4.8/5 or higher. Its chapters are short and the book stays at a fairly fast pace despite its subject matter, so it’s a quick and enjoyable read. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, books centering around the War era, and anyone in general who is looking for a beautiful and meaningful read. 

BOY 21 - MATTHEW QUICK //

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I went into reading Boy 21 with absolutely no knowledge as to what the book was about. I had an inkling that it had something to do with sports, but that was all the indication I had. Halfway through the book, I realized there was a bright orange sticker on the front of the book that proclaimed the author, Matthew Quick, as the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook. I have yet to read said book, but I have seen the movie, and it was phenomenal. But that’s beside the point. This post is about Boy 21. 

This book follows Finley McManus, the only white boy on his high school basketball team. He lives in a town called Bellmont located somewhere in Pennsylvania, where his town is ruled by an Irish mob, drugs, and violence. He lives with his father and his grandfather, and his girlfriend Erin is his only friend. One day, his basketball coach tells him of a new kid in town named Russ. Russ and Finley have a lot in common, and Finley’s job is to watch after Russ and make sure Russ tries out for the basketball team. I’m not going to say much more because it would involve an insane amount of spoilers, so I will leave it at that.

This book was an incredibly fast read. I didn’t put it down, and that was shocking to me. I was wary of how I’d react to this book considering I’m not a sports person in any sort of way, but I really enjoyed this book. I couldn’t identify with nearly any of the situations or circumstances in the book, but both Finley and Russ had characteristics with which I could identify. In a way, the ending of this book reminded me of The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, which is one of my favorite books. I can’t tell why it reminded me of that book because it would spoil everything, but I hope those who have read both books can agree with me, or at least see where I’m coming from. 

If I were to give this book a rating, I’d genuinely give it a 4.5/5 or higher. It’s heartwarming, it’s heartbreaking, and it emphasizes the importance of friendships and relationships. I can especially identify with this book because it’s set during Finley’s senior year of high school and deals with the notion of college and its inevitability, and I am also in my senior year of high school, very close to the end for me. It factored in a special nostalgia-for-the-future factor that made me enjoy this book more than I already did. I absolutely recommend this book to anyone. I think it can be a universally appreciated read and that anyone could enjoy it.

MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN - RANSOM RIGGS //

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Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is the debut novel from Ransom Riggs. The idea for the book came when Riggs approached his publisher about creating a book using vernacular photographs, which Riggs collected. This book is the end result to that idea. The idea seemed odd to me, and the book definitely did not end up being what I thought it would.

The book follows sixteen-year-old Jacob Portman, whose grandfather grew up an orphan in the second World War. Jacob’s grandfather often told Jacob of the peculiar children with which he grew up in a home. He had photographs of these children, and Jacob was enchanted with these stories. As he grew older, he realized the stories were more fiction than reality, and stopped believing in his grandfather’s “fairy tales.” When his grandfather is killed by wild animals, Jacob is devastated and haunted by his grandfather’s last words, and sets out to find what they really mean. On his journey he encounters peculiar people and finds he is more like his grandfather than not.

This book bordered on a slow read at times, but it never got boring. At some point in the beginning I picked up on a few of the twists, but I never got the details exactly right. Riggs created a whole world a la Harry Potter with his own mystical creatures and horrifying villains. The book took an unexpected turn near the end, though I wasn’t as shocked as I assumed I would be. 

As for ratings, I’d give this book a 4.1/5. I am trying to be less personal in my ratings and more constructive in relation to the storyline and how it was constructed. In all honesty I enjoyed The Name of the Star more than Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, but the writing style and execution of the latter earn it a better rating. It pulls more heartstrings and envelops you more into its world than TNotS seems to. 

THE NAME OF THE STAR - MAUREEN JOHNSON //

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My friend recommended The Name of the Star to me when I was on the hunt for books to read. I was stuck in a reading stupor, unsure of what to read. To be honest, it took me around 10 months to finally get around to reading this book. However, I feel it was definitely worth the wait.

The Name of the Star is about a girl named Rory who moves to London from Louisiana her senior year of high school and begins to attend a boarding school there. On her first day in London, recreations of the Jack the Ripper murders begin. One night while Rory and her friends are awaiting the next murder to begin, she encounters a man she can see but her friend cannot. At the police interrogation, she meets another man who interrogates her but does not seem to be a policeman. She learns she is more connected to the murders than she could ever think.

All in all, this book is a fast read and a very entertaining. It takes many turns and I appreciate Maureen Johnson’s attempts to catch her audience off guard, but every twist seemed very blatant and obvious much before it was revealed. The book borders on cheesy every so often, and some scenes should not have been as grossly descriptive as they were, but it does not take back from the enjoyableness of this book. This book is definitely one of the lighter books on this list of books (surprisingly so, considering it deals with murders.) On a number scale, I’d give this a 3.7/5. It’s not a bad book. However, the fact that I predicted almost every twist did take away from the excitement and thrill and it did border on cliche fairly often.

INSURGENT - VERONICA ROTH //

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Insurgent is the sequel to Divergent. It was released in early May of 2012, very close to my birthday, so it was a well-waited birthday present. Insurgentremains a wonderful book in my eyes, but it doesn’t compare to the excitement and thrill of the first book of the series.

We once again find ourselves following Tris Prior, now technically factionless along with her boyfriend Tobias Eaton and many other members of both Abnegation and Dauntless. They begin the book hiding out in Amity headquarters when Erudite-aligned Dauntless stage a raid, causing Tris and her fellow newly factionless to seek refuge in another place. They eventually find themselves in Candor headquarters where they reunite with the rest of the “good” Dauntless. There, Tris and Tobias are arrested on suspicion of conspiring against Abnegation and running the simulation (a memorable scene if you read the first book, which you definitely should.) No more spoilers! But this book is action-packed, heartbeat increasing, gut-wrenching at times, and eventually infuriating by means of a massive cliffhanger. 

I absolutely recommend this book if you enjoyed Divergent and are interested in continuing the series. It continues to be fascinating and thrilling, just as the first book was. On a number scale, I believe I’d give this book a 4.1/5 just because it doesn’t quite compare to Divergent, but I still enjoy it almost as much. 

Favorite line: “We both have war inside us. Sometimes it keeps us alive. Sometimes it threatens to destroy us.”